


Forever Hold My Breath

by liketogetlost



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-09
Updated: 2011-06-09
Packaged: 2017-10-20 06:35:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/209795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liketogetlost/pseuds/liketogetlost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This is the Bad Wolf scenario." Can be set after s2 or s4.</p><p>Scattered across the stars were bits and pieces of Rose Tyler that he ran into from time to time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forever Hold My Breath

Scattered across the stars were bits and pieces of Rose Tyler that he ran into from time to time.

Like that gold dust children used in craft projects shaken onto a sweater, she was spilled all over everything and there was no way anyone could sweep all of her off because there will always be just one stubborn fleck left stuck to a random thread.

Each time the big bad wolf found him, he remembered something else about her he had tried to forget. Imprinted on the bottom of an antique mortar and pestle was the time the nail of her ring finger was rough enough to nick the palm of his hand accidentally. The tiny wound healed itself quicker than he could blink but she'd apologized a dozen times as she'd run the pad of her thumb against the inside of his hand, brow furrowed, lips a pout and hair a dark yellow and light brown veil around her face as she stared downwards.

The name of an inter stellar rock band was the way she'd sighed against his neck when he'd had to carry her back to the TARDIS after a long night of dancing beneath the meteor shower of planet Kara. He'd gone to get her punch and found her fast asleep in a chair, her feet curled under her and her long, white gown flowing around her in the warm breeze. She'd been soft and heavy against his chest and she'd wrapped her arms tight around him as she stirred and breathed some nonsense near his ear. He'd laid her down in his bed that night while he'd poked at perfectly working wires underneath the ship's console.

A inappropriately named hurricane headed toward the American gulf coast was the sound of her voice as she'd screamed bloody murder at him for something he couldn't remember. Possibly it had been after he'd almost been shot, and she hadn't been able to let it be. Huge, wet tears had streamed down her cheeks like raindrops down a window pane as she'd yelled at him, voice cracking from anger or fear. But he remembered it had definitely been after they'd defeated the beast, when she'd begun to knock on his door in the middle of their nights and asked him to make her some tea, because she liked the way he made it best.

Forbidden to forget, the universe continued to find new ways to remind him of exactly what he'd lost. He was always careful to never cross his or her time line, but he could never escape the animal that kept hunting him down. One for the ages, he thought it would make a terrifying fairytale. The princess had saved the prince by sending herself a way to escape from her cell, and forever her prince was cursed to wander without his love. Chased eternally by the very thing that had once rescued him.

The young girl with star beams for eyes and whose hands had brought life had imprinted herself all over hundreds of galaxies like drops of black paint on the ground. Spurred by her love for him and determined to get back, she'd given him a kind of gift she might not understand even now. For as long as words survived, there would be Rose Tyler. And there would be another memory waiting around another corner for him to pick up with his hands and drop into his pocket, lost and founds for him to find and keep.

 

 _"Ah, how frightened I have been! How dark it was inside the wolf."_  
\--Little Red Riding Hood


End file.
